SETTING THE STANDARDS
Rashid Lombard built a festival that made Cape Town a world jazz capital. But now he’s switching off his work phone. He tells Percy Mabandu about 16 years of blood, sweat and networking
AS jazz Twitter filled up with the names of artists billed to headline the 16th Cape Town International Jazz Festival, tales began to swirl about Rashid Lombard’s ousting as the event’s director.
“A dispute among its corporate brass sparked the resignation,” claimed one news report.
The tech-savvy old timer responded by loading a video message on his website explaining his departure. He dismissed the rumours.
When I catch up with him to chat about the road travelled, and the road ahead, I expect to hear the croaky voice of an exhausted man. But the 64-year-old has fire in him yet. He speaks with the spark of a former champion boxer hoping to taste the big time again.
This time it will only be vicariously — via the glory of those he hopes to coach.
“I’m going to spend my time nurturing young entrepreneurs. I want to share my skills. I want to help young businessmen who are willing to learn from me,” says Lombard.
And he sounds more than a little relieved when he talks about his resignation.
“It’s been a demanding 15 years of hard labour. Travelling all the time. Many times having my breakfast only after lunch. The struggle of sponsorship. It’s been a strain on me. It gave me very little time for myself. So it’s a welcome break that I look forward to.”
Lombard has a lot more than the festival to reminisce about, too. “I worked as a photojournalist for 28 years, until I stopped just after the 1994 elections.”
Apart from the regular news drill of capturing images from the trenches of the freedom struggle, he worked as Nelson Mandela’s official photographer in the early 1990s. As a staff snapper for the newly unbanned ANC, he travelled with Madiba on his first post-prison visit to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Closing the door on photography opened up others in radio, and ultimately the business of staging one of the jazz world’s biggest bashes.
It started during his days as station manager at Heart Radio in 1996, when Lombard went on a listening tour to the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. There he collared the festival’s head, Theo van den Hoek, and asked him to help launch a similar event in South Africa.
The Dutchman agreed and in 1999 the Cape Town North Sea Jazz Festival was launched. It took on its current name in 2006. It’s been 16 years and the festival is now Africa’s grandest jazz gathering.
After Lombard’s exit, the acting director will be Khalid Abdulla, group CEO of Sekunjalo Investments, majority owner of espAfrika, the company that owns the festival. The Rashid Lombard Family Trust and festival co-founder Billy Domingo each own 24.5%. Domingo will keep his hands-on role as head of operations.
Over the 16 years, the festival grew from a prestigious but purist jazz event to a lifestyle jamboree. Many have accused the organisers of abandoning jazz values for frills and submitting to the tyranny of popular tastes.
Lombard laughs off the criticisms. “You have to look at growing your footprint. You see, I learnt from Claude Nobs, who started the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He said, as long as the music is good, you bring it in.
“He was friends with Miles Davis and he was booking reggae artists to play at that jazz festival. It makes the people happy,” says Lombard.
“We brought on reggae only later, thanks to Billy, who was friends with (the Jamaican reggae band) Third World.”
When faithful to its loftier intentions, the festival enticed some of the greatest jazz players in history. One of these is the form’s elder statesman, Wayne Shorter. Lombard remembers that it took him five years to get Shorter to come to Cape Town.
“I was at the jazz festival in New Orleans and somebody pointed out a woman to me and said ‘That’s Wayne Shorter’s wife!’
So I snuck up on her and introduced myself. I said, ‘I’ll take you guys on a safari. The Big Five!’ And what do you know? He came!”
Lombard grows animated at the recollection. His memories stretch as far back as the start of his affair with jazz, half a century ago, during childhood visits to Sis Francis Kente’s shebeen in Cape Town’s Nyanga East township.
Sis Francis would open her house to the young cadre of jazz enthusiasts. “I even tried my hand at a flute, but it didn’t work out. It was easier to take pictures of musicians, who were always there too. Cups Nkanuka, Winston Mankunku, the Ngcukana brothers. Everyone was there.”
Later, the music became a source of healing for Lombard during his traumatic experiences of documenting apartheid violence.
And his two decades in the jazz business have been rewarding, both emotionally and financially.
But at some point, you need to stop and have breakfast. LS